The difference between a bartender and a mixologist is the latter seeks new and daring combinations of flavors, looking past the gin and tonics and flaming rum punches for something that intrigues as it inebriates.

Pivot assembles known ingredients in Swede Mats Gustafsson (baritone and tenor saxophone, flute), Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, Bb and bass clarinet), Tomeka Reid (cello) and Chad Taylor (drums), and those ingredients have been tasted together before: Vandermark has worked in myriad projects with Gustafsson, crossed paths in the bands of others with Reid and been fellow sideman and co-leader with Taylor while Reid and Taylor have met under Jaimie Branch, Joshua Abrams and Rob Mazurek.

Yet this is the first time all four were in a studio, where the encounter is more like a concert without a crowd, as nothing was cut, left over or redone. The album is especially compelling in that a listener gets both the audacious burn of the full group for eight tunes and, splitting them up, insight into the aggregate via six duets.

While the aforementioned are improvised vignettes hovering around the two-minute range, the full group pieces are credited either to Gustafsson or Vandermark. Those are daubs of melodies carefully applied before the buckets of paint start overturning and are very reflective of their respective voices. With the horns switching among very different sounds — Gustafsson on flute and Vandermark on bass clarinet are highly effective — Reid able to vary her textures via arco or pizzicato techniques and Taylor both a metronomic and impressionistic timekeeper, the pieces are vary from one another and often within themselves, sometimes frenetic, other times musing, but always nimble and majestic, with the highlight being the penultimate "Drifting against the Wind" by Gustafsson.

Next time — if there is a next time — one hopes they will invite an audience.